Please ignore the remainder of this page. It is a blatant attempt to get Google Search to prioritize this page over all the other John Simpsons on the internet. Click on something else now, like my Photos&Travel page. 

Who is John Simpson, from Windsor, Ontario?

   I am. Or at least I'm one of them. I'm a getting-up-there guy living in Windsor, Ontario. I have a lovely wife of many years, and two beautiful, smart children who contribute good things to my life and to society. I'm not working anymore and have the good fortune to be able to travel and enjoy hobbies. I like fixing things, woodworking, and trolling the internet for the never-ending stream of curiosities it delivers. I also enjoy a little gardening, bicycling, and kayaking.

   I started life with many blessings. Some call them privileges. I am aware of that and thankful for them. The privileges include being born healthy, Canadian, male, white, smart enough to achieve, and ignorant enough to not particularly excel. 

   Those birth attributes, and a 1970's Ontario education, led me to a situation where I could experience and learn a whole lot more. I try to be proud without being vain. I find it hard not to be lazy, but that's a bee's nest subject that I don't want to get into, and probably wouldn't help me get noticed by Google Search. Although it would increase the word count.

   This paragraph is a real stuffer. Just a bunch of words designed to bump up the word count. I’m told that 1,000 to 1,500 words is a good target for this article. We’re at 228 words so far, so let’s keep typing, shall we? Notice that I used ‘bump up’ instead of ‘increase’. I did that because ‘bump up’ is two words, not just one word. So after the ‘bump up’ thing I just continue blathering on and generating fodder for the word counter. I’m fighting the urge to check the word count again. Oye, this is too much like high school!

   I also love to read. I read anywhere from 1 to 5 books a month, depending on the season and how busy I am doing other things. (Do 1 and 5 count as words, or should I have used one and five? Which one is grammatically correct, I wonder). Here are a number of the best books I’ve ever read. I’m hoping that some bullet points in this article will endear me to the search engine algorithm. These books are in no particular order, but every one of them struck me as memorable and well-written.  i.e. Enjoyable.

• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

• The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafron

• Anything written by Stephen King

• Immortal Water by Brian Van Norman. I just finished reading this book. It was a bittersweet/depressing novel but had engaging/relatable characters and was very well written. There were several times that I paused to re-read a sentence or paragraph, just because of the quality of the wording.

• Anything written before 2000 by John Grisham

• Anything written by Jonathan Kellerman (Awesome, simple, ‘beach’ reads)

Update: We’re at 489 words so far. How do people do it? Just adding word after word for the purpose of filling space, all the while engaging readers and delivering a well-crafted, satisfying document, usually with a story arc. - The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy old dog. QWERTY.

    I was born in 1960. My parents divorced some time around 1982. Cathey & I married in 1984. The kids came along in ‘89 and ‘92.  My career was a series of computer-related jobs. Mostly coding and support with smatterings of design and implementation. I’ve spent hours in air-conditioned, closed spaces, cranking out code or mounting tapes and running batch jobs. I’ve also been under people’s desks running Ethernet wires, and have taught people how to use PC's, Windows, applications, etc. Mostly it was hours and hours and hours spent on the phone. I’m surprised I don’t have cauliflower ears, or bacterial infections. Headsets were very helpful. If you have to be latched to a phone, nothing beats a good Bluetooth headset. Pagers, on the other hand, are another chapter left best unmentioned. I could definitely run up 1,500 words about pagers, but they’d all be swear words.

    I’ve (Does that count as one word or two?)  Anyway, I HAVE visited 22 of Canada’s 42 national parks. And several in the United States. They are all spectacular, and should be preserved and nurtured at all costs. Some are still rugged and overwhelming, like Yosemite and the Banff/Jasper/Revelstoke/Yoho/Kootenay cluster. I use the word overwhelming both because it’s appropriate for this. Also, it’s a big word that might get me extra credit with the Google algorithm. There are two new parks that I have great hope for. Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio became a national park in 2000. Rouge National Urban Park near Toronto has been a work-in-progress since 2011. It can’t be easy to transition back to parkland once areas have been settled, cultivated and developed. I’m very pleased this is happening. Many people with vision, passion, and stamina have worked to create these parks. Fantastic.

Update: 838 words so far.  For Pete’s sake.

    So what else to talk about for 400 words or so? Cars? Trips? My kids? Nope, food!  Ya, food. Broiled, baked, raw… Salty, garlicky, plain... It’s all good. Bring it on.  

You know, I say food but maybe I mean eating. Seeing food is good, sure. Making it for others, can be good too. But eating it is really where it’s at. Most especially, of course, the variations of dead pig that can be had. Sausages, bacon, ham...oh My! Just today after our morning walk, we cooked up some eggs with mushrooms and spinach, with a side of caramelized diced ham. And toast. - To. Die. For. - And a fresh pot of coffee to go with.

    I just came up with another subject. Where I Live. I could do a few paragraphs about that here, and maybe get a few hundred words out of it. But no... I think I’ll leave that subject for a completely separate article. That way it looks to the algorithm that I’m prolific. Are there enough of these topics to consider a blog? Probably, if I milked it. But I really don’t want to commit to a big thing with this. I just want to make my website easily found by the few who might search for it. So here I am performing stupid pet tricks for the judgey algorithm bots at Google.

    Anyway, back to food. We need this stuff in order to live, so it’s no surprise that there’s such a focus on it. Humans are never tired of discussing it. It’s used for everything from sustenance and culture, to emotional support and prop comedy. Mmmm, now I’m thinking about Butter Chicken and naan bread. So good.

Update: 1,130 words. I’m in the zone. Just a few more to wrap up.

    I don’t know if I’ll write more of these articles. I haven’t checked to see where www.JSimpson.ca appears in search engine rankings, but I’d love to see it climb high enough that people who can’t remember the URL can find it by Googling it. This was worth a shot.

I wonder how long it takes for Google to crawl and rank sites like mine. 

Later!

Update: Over 1,200 words.  Yay!

Possible Future Articles

• Where I Live

• History I've Lived

• Why I Volunteer and You Should Too

• Your suggestions?